1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates, generally, to combination articles of manufacture, and more particularly relates to a bed liner for a pick-up truck that provides a camper top for a pick-up truck when inverted.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Pick up trucks are often used for chores that damage the bed of the truck. Heavy items can dent the truck bed, rendering it unsightly or affecting its utility, for example.
Accordingly, inventors have developed protective means for pick-up truck beds: the protective means are commonly known as bed liners because they cover the bed and protect it from the ravages of use.
Typically, a truck owner will purchase a bed liner and mount it to the truck in a permanent fashion; the bed liner must be tightly secured to the truck bed if it is to perform its intended function, so it makes sense to permanently attach the liner to the truck bed.
Owners of pick-up trucks have also noted that the bed of a pick-up truck makes a convenient sleeping area for occassional use. Inventors have therefore developed articles of manufacture known as "camper tops" which are used to enclose the bed area of the truck so that the bed area can be used for sleeping quarters on camping trips or other recreational journeys.
Both truck bed liners and camper tops are very popular among pick-up truck owners, for obvious reasons. However, if a pick-up truck owner wants to protect the bed of the truck on a daily basis and have a camper top available for occassional use, it becomes necessary to install a commercially available bed liner on the truck, and to store a camper top in a storage location such as a garage until the camper top is needed.
Thus, many pick-up truck owners own bed liners such as those shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,811,768 to Nix (1975), 4,111,481, 4,161,335, 4,181,349 and 4,336,963 to Nix and others, awarded in 1978, 1979, 1980, and 1982, respectively, 4,279,439 to Cantieri (1981), 4,333,678 to Munoz and others (1982), and 4,341,412 to Wayne (1982). Since those bed liners serve only their intended function and no other function, many pick-up truck owners also own camper tops of the type shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,648,649 to Beal (1987).
The Beal camper top, and other known camper tops as well, cannot function as a bed liner. Just as importantly, none of the bed liners that were known prior to the present disclosure can function as camper tops.
Clearly, the disparate arts of bed liners and camper tops have been understood by earlier inventors as being separate fields of endeavor; no teaching or suggestion appears in any known prior art literature that a single article of manufacture could perform both functions.
If an article of manufacture could be discovered that would obviate the need for pick-up truck owners to own both bed liners and camper tops, the art of both fields would be advanced and the art of combination bed liners and camper tops would be pioneered.
However, the prior art neither teaches nor suggests how such a pioneering breakthrough could be achieved.